Grieving Guardiola to take pay cut

Pep Guardiola is reportedly set to take a pay-cut of his £20million salary at Manchester City when he returns following the death of his mother.

The City manager is currently back in Barcelona, where Dolors Sala Carrio, 82, passed away on Monday after contracting coronavirus.

Club executives including director of football Txiki Begiristain and chief executive Ferran Soriano will also take a cut so that non-playing staff can be paid in full during the pandemic, according to The Times.

City’s manager and senior staff members are believed to have already informally discussed taking a reduction in salary to help alleviate the impact of the suspension of the season, which was announced nearly a month ago now.

City confirmed at the weekend that they had decided against furloughing non-playing staff, but no agreement has been made yet on how much of their salaries the senior staff will waive.

Officials from City’s seven sister clubs – which include New York City and Melbourne City FC – could also take cuts.

The Premier League champions confirmed the sad news on Monday that Guardiola’s mother had passed in Manresa, Barcelona.

She is one of more than 3,000 killed by the virus in Catalonia, and more than 13,000 in Spain.

Just last month Guardiola donated one million euros to the Angel Soler Daniel foundation to help fight the virus in his homeland.